Defying the Odds: Growing Up & Growing Older with a Lifelong Physical Impairment (Cerebral Palsy)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of individuals who are aging with a lifelong and/or early-onset physical impairment. Method: A qualitative methodology was utilized consisting of narrative inquiry informed by the Life Course Perspective. The life course perspective is a dynamic approach that encompasses multiple theories including sociology, human development, and aging, highlighting how social, historical, and cultural contexts shape people’s lives. Narratives are storied ways of knowing and communicating that people use to organize events in their lives and make sense out of their experiences. Nine community-dwelling individuals (3 men; 6 women), aged 26-70, with mild to severe Cerebral Palsy were recruited using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling. Multiple (3-4), in-depth interviews were completed with each participant in order to co-construct their life stories. The data analysis was iterative. NVIVO 8 was used to organize the data, supporting a systematic caparison of emerging themes and categories, as well as the central plot that weaves the participants’ experiences together. Findings: “Defying the Odds” emerged as the central narrative that weaved together their experience of growing up and growing older. Their narrative is depicted through the trajectory of the disordered body that manifests itself in peaks and valleys. Their narrative is also weaved together by three central threads: Achieving a Sense of Belonging, Overcoming being Seen but not Heard, and Striving for Self-Reliance. “Normalization” emerged as a key recurring theme in the participants’ life stories. The focus of rehabilitation on "normalizing" movement, particularly walking, during childhood can lead to social psychological challenges as well as problems later in the life course as people encounter increasing fatigue and decreasing functional abilities but no longer have access to rehabilitation services. Implications: Theoretically, the disordered body needs to be reconceptualized in ways that are more positive. Conceptualizing a theory on aging with disability needs to be pursued. Clinically, we need to work towards developing a continuum of care across the life course with a focus on long-term maintenance and prevention of secondary health problems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".